Departments

Trondheim

At St. Olavs Hospital/NTNU six operating rooms are available and together they make up the research infrastructure referred to as the «Operating Room of the Future». The operating rooms cover these areas: Vascular; Gastro; Gynaecology; Ear, Nose and Throat; Orthopaedics, and Neurosurgery. The goal is to develop new treatment methods and medical technology. Through NorMIT both national and international projects are co-ordinated, and participants can use the resources in both Oslo and Trondheim.

Equipment that is available through NorMIT in Trondheim:

The Da Vinci Surgical System Since 2010 St. Olavs Hospital in Trondheim has used the so-called Da Vinci System in cancer surgery – among other things to remove prostate cancer through keyhole surgery. Compared to open surgery the robots make the surgical procedures less invasive. The patient experiences less pain and needs fewer hospital nights. In addition, the working conditions are better for the surgeon and he or she can therefore perform more surgeries in the course of a day.

Artis Zeego DynaCT Angiography system (Siemens Artis Zeego). This system consists of a robot holding the C-arm, which can quickly perform rotational angiography and 3D visualisation of the patient during the procedure. It is also possible to use laparoscopy and robotic surgery. The system is equipped with videoscope equipment from Olympus with HD quality.

Verasonics Vantage ultrasound scanner
The ultrasound system from the manufacturer Verasonics Inc. (USA) gives us unique opportunities to test the ultrasound imaging methods of the future for both experimental and clinical use. The system is adapted for research and allows the users to set up arbitrary imaging setups in a short time. It sends raw data (channel data) directly to an ordinary PC where it is stored and processed in real time. The system’s high performance makes it possible to take thousands of images. This makes possible improvements in the quantification of tissue deformation (elastography) and blood flow. We have purchased multi-purpose ultrasound probes for the system.
Contact person: Gabriel Kiss

Navigation Navigation system from Brainlab at the Ear, Nose and Throat department.

TriCaster mini multi-camera production and media publishing solution
Main features of the TriCaster include:

– capturing of up to four live video sources

– mixing of the sources using various visual templates

– graphics and text overlay

– storage of all input streams and of the final output with synchronized time-stamps

Additionally two universal scaler boxes from tvONE, a full HD camera from Panasonic and a camera remote control unit are also available for use. The scalers can provide video scaling, format conversion and extend the input possibilities to for example analog signals. The system will be installed on a trailer approved for the operating theater, to further increase its portability.

NorMIT has developed its own open source code for research purposes. The project develops common building blocks for functional navigation tools, important in the planning and guidance of image-guided treatment:

Oslo

The Intervention Centre at Oslo University Hospital is an interdisciplinary R&D department for the development of clinical methods within minimally invasive image-guided treatment. The Centre has pioneered many image-guided treatment techniques and is developing new technology for computer-assisted surgery.

The intervention centre is organised as a separate department located in a section of Rikshospitalet (The National Hospital), OUS. The centre has a 50-strong team consisting of doctors, nurses, radiographers, physicists, information scientists and other engineering disciplines. Affiliated with the Intervention Centre are three professors at the Medical Faculty and one professor as well as two associate professors at the Department of Medical Physics at the University of Oslo, one professor at Department of Electronics and Telecommunication at NTNU and one associate professor at Oslo University College.

The centre has three operating rooms dedicated to research. They are all equipped with state-of-the-art equipment for intra operative image-guided treatment. One operating room has installed a high-field MRI, 3T MRI from Phillips. By making use of an adjoining room only separated by sliding doors, the patient can be rolled in and out of the MRI scanner in order to obtain up-to-date image information during a procedure. Furthermore, some surgical procedures can be performed inside the MRI scanner.

Operating room two has new angiography equipment installed, Siemens Artis Zeego. This system consists of a robot holding the C-arm that performs rotational angiography and 3D visualisation of the patient during the procedure.

A third operating room is used for laparoscopy and robotic surgery, and is equipped with videoscope equipment from Olympus with HD quality.

In 2016, an operating room with Siemens Artis-Zeego equipment will be connected with an operating room for advanced laparoscopy and other surgery with a mobile CT gantry (Siemens Flash) and an MRI scanner (Siemens Magnetom Prisma).

Around 1,200 patients are treated yearly as a part of development and research projects at the Intervention Centre.

The research at the centre has been focused on three core areas: MRI, X-ray, ultrasound and video-guided intervention and treatment; Robotics and surgical simulators; Biosensors and wireless sensor networks. The technology research covers areas such as image processing, visualisation, image navigation and robotic control with the development of technological solutions that support minimally invasive procedures.